Eight killed in blast and shelling in Somali capital

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December 21, 2009 4:44:29 AM PST

MOGADISHU, Somalia --

A police official and a journalist say a bomb blast and a separate mortar attack on a radio station in Somalia's capital have killed eight people. Mogadishu's regional police chief Col. Ahmed Hassan Malin says Monday's roadside bomb targeted a vehicle belonging to a government official who defected from the insurgency. The official was not in the car but the blast killed his driver and four other civilians in south Mogadishu.

Journalist Abshir Abdi Ahmed at the Radio Voice of Democracy in north Mogadishu says a separate mortar attack on the station killed the station director's wife and two civilians. Seventeen people were wounded.

The violence comes ahead of a planned offensive by the government against the Islamist insurgency.